So when will we get to see Heath Ledger's last movie?


February 24, 2009

FROM THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
Backstage at the Oscars on Sunday night, Kate Ledger told reporters that her family is very much in the loop on her brother’s final movie.

“We’ve seen a little bit of the footage,” she said of Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,” Ledger’s last film. “I think it’s going to be amazing.”



But the comments raised a larger question: When will U.S. audiences get to see it?

“Parnassus,” about a traveling magician who gives customers more than what they bargained for, is a joint production of financial entity Grosvenor Park and sales mogul Samuel Hadida of Davis Films. It was gliding along as just another independently financed production — and product of Gilliam’s funhouse imagination — when Ledger died early last year in the middle of production.

The project’s fate was thrown into question until Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp stepped in, with all three part of an elaborate workaround that had the actors playing different parts of Ledger’s role.

That saved the production. But the sales process since then has been nearly as complicated.

A number of U.S. buyers during the summer and early fall were said to be interested in acquiring stateside rights — Lionsgate and Overture were reportedly among the potential suitors — but word of a potential deal quickly quieted down.

The picture does present a marketing challenge. Even with the Ledger hook, a distributor would have a hard time with marketing. Gilliam has grown more experimental in recent years with such fare as “Tideland” and “The Brothers Grimm,” and marketing experts say that retailing “Parnassus” as a Ledger film risks running a word-of-mouth problem with general audiences unaccustomed to that kind of material.

Despite all that, a U.S. deal is expected shortly.